McKinney v. Ryan’s Empirical Analysis
813 F.3d 798 · 2015
Citation profile
17 federal appellate · 5 district · 5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 54 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2025 · most notably Mann v. Ryan (2016), Runningeagle v. Ryan (2016)
17 federal appellate · 5 district · 5 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Williams v. Taylor · Kotteakos v. United States · Brecht v. Abrahamson · Arizona v. Fulminante
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 54 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“we look only to the decision of th[e Arizona Supreme Court], ... only [considering] ... the decision of the sentencing judge ... to the degree it was adopted or substantially incorporated by the Arizona Supreme Court.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Spreitz v. Ryan · Martinez v. Ryan“unless the [S]tate, within a reasonable period, either corrects the constitutional error in his death sentence or vacates the sentence and imposes a lesser sentence consistent with law.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments require that the sentencer ... not be precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant’s character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death---- Given that the imposition of death by public authority is so profoundly different from all other penalties, ... [the sentencer must be free to give] independent mitigating weight to aspects of the defendant’s character and record and to circumstances of the offense proffered in mitigation....”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Hedlund v. Ryan · Hedlund v. Ryan
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.